An Evening With Ollie - Livin' the Good Life

Nov. 20th, 2013

09:07 am - An Evening With Ollie

Last night Maya brought Ollie over before bed for a little Nana-Honey-time. I was finishing up the dishes, so he trotted down the hall into the bathroom where Steve was shaving. He enjoyed watching that process, and he was so quiet that Maya called to him to see where he was. (Quiet can sometimes mean trouble.) He popped his head sideways out of the bathroom door so she could see him and said, "Here I am!" So cute.We proceeded into the playroom where Ollie served me up some "tea" and all manner of "foods" until I was completely stuffed. Then we cut wooden vegetables for a while until he decided he wanted to give the vegetables a ride in his wooden rocking boat. He started throwing the vegies into the boat which made a very loud clattering sound, so I requested that he place the vegies in the boat GENTLY. Which he did very deliberately for a while, just to show me that he could. Then he lost interest and started pounding wooden balls into his pounding toy. He drove trucks around with all the sound effects, and settled on the jack-in-the-box wind-up toy. It made me think I needed to find some more QUIET activities for the playroom. Not that I mind noise, but in the evenings I like to wind down. Exactly what he needs to be doing before bed. But, he has other ideas.Ollie can be incredibly cute. So, so smart. His vocabulary is stellar for his age. He's using more and more advanced and subtle sentence structures that often surprise us. And he has strikingly fetching social skills, when he wants to use them. Other times, he can be downright ornery! Like impulsively deciding to throw a tile though our French door windows, (who knows why... just 'cuz) and luckily Maya, being a wonderfully watchful mama, spotted it coming and raced to stop him just in time. Then came the little lesson about why we don't throw hard objects at windows. I'm sure he's heard it before.Maya says that Ollie is reading now. He saw the flyer for Vons in the newspaper yesterday, and he said that was the same as the sign on the Vons store in town. Then, they were looking at an alphabet book and the word for "T" was Thanksgiving. (!!! dumb) And he said, "No, "T" is for Toto. Huh? How did he know that? By the way, Maya says "Toto" is Ollie's default word when he can't think of what to say. Who knows why. Just one of those quirky two year old things.There is nothing more adorable than Ollie showing up in his pajamas before bed.... even with butter in his hair, as he had last night.